


Family

by Euphoric_Mania



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 03:36:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19455517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphoric_Mania/pseuds/Euphoric_Mania
Summary: Writing Prompt: FamilyRaised by an abusive father, sent to war as a soldier, broken by the Burning Legion, and rescued by a kind stranger- to finally find the love and family he had been left wanting for so long.





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> My OC Ceros Sunweaver (a Blood Elf mage) is one my of characters in game on WoW. He's not really a proper role play toon, but I fill out his profile on TRP3 as if he is. 
> 
> He's had a tough, abusive upbringing, and a hard, friendless, and unhappy life, until everything changes. Someone saves him (who shall be introduced in a later story), and when his brother returns to him, he finally rediscovers the family he wanted so badly growing up.
> 
> It's angsty and messed up, and I'm sorry. XD He has so much baggage, and I'm not sure I've depicted it that well psychologically. It took me four hours to try and sort out my thoughts on the matter, as he argued with me a bit on the way things happened.

“No,” he whispered hoarsely, as the demon Inquisitor loomed over him, as it seized his face roughly within its clawed hand. Long talons dug cruelly into his already bruised jaw. “Please... no...”

The demon laughed, a terrifying sound that shrank his soul in horror, and he cried out as he was plunged once more into his own mind, as the Inquisitor carried his consciousness with it, to observe its actions. The demon dug through his memories, as casually as some magistrate shuffling through paperwork of no real consequence, as if his life were some menial record of a stodgy and boring businessman's accounts.

“Stop-” he heard himself beg, his voice seeming far away to his own ears, and the Inquisitor paused over an early memory of his.

“What have we here?” it murmured maliciously, and before his minds eye bloomed the recollection. 

His heart wept. He knew this day, could remember it all too well. It was him as a child, so bright and eager to please and so naive. He had built and assembled a delightful little toy, a complex puzzle box. He'd done it on his own, as he was good at having ideas and building them, making them into real things. He'd immediately run to his father, who was busy in his study. He should have waited until his father wasn't working, but he'd been so proud of himself, so excited to share his creation, that he thought- surely Father would approve of him now.

Surely Father would notice him for himself, and not as a poorer shadow of his older brother.

“Father!” he had called as he entered the room. “Look what I made! I built it myself. I should like to be an engineer someday, like the tinkerer in the market!” And he'd held up his little puzzle box, wooden and polished, its pieces interlocking in intricate patterns.

But Father hadn't been pleased. Father had risen from his chair like a towering specter, his scowling face and angry eyes making him feel afraid, making him back up in alarmed confusion, puzzle still held forth in his hand.

Father struck the toy from his fingers, and Ceros once again watched the pieces break and fly apart across the marble floor. He felt hot tears well up in his eyes, both real and remembered, as his father had railed at him, shouting that no son of his name would be allowed to engage in such low born nonsense.

His mother had rescued him from his Father's unjustified wrath. His mother, so sweet and gentle, so loving- so unlike his father- had held him on her lap in her private rooms as he wailed in misery. He'd been so frightened, so sad, so desperate. Why didn't Father love him? Why did Father love his brother so much, but found him to be such a disappointment? What did Dracaris do so well, that he couldn't match?

He tried to turn his mind away, to make the torment stop, but could not.

“Aww,” the demon mocked. “Poor little thing. But wait! What's this now?” 

It dove into another memory, tearing a new wound into his soul as he once more beheld the grisly sight of his mother, lying dead upon the stones of the courtyard in the center of their home. She had fallen, they said, from the balcony above. Some had dared to accuse his father of murdering her, but his father was an important man, and they had been silenced. It had been declared an accident, or perhaps suicide, such a shame. What a waste. Her blood forever stained the stones in his mind, and he never went into the courtyard again. He was alone now, a minor son abandoned to the care of a parent who did not like him. No more would his mother hold him, no more would she soothe his woes with her love. His last memory of her was that of her face, her mouth slack, her green eyes half open and vacant, their glow of life snuffed out, her beautiful golden tresses spread out around her head soaked with pooling blood.

His father had wrapped up her affairs without feeling and buried her forever. He made no attempt to comfort Ceros in his shock. The only notice he received was from his brother Dracaris, who had tried to ask him if he was all right, had tried to look out for him in the days and months that followed. Father always scolded Dracaris for coddling his brother as much as his mother had, and then Dracaris had been sent away all together, to board at the Academy, studying to become a mage. He was often away from home then, his visits infrequent.

Ceros had no one, now, and his shock eventually turned into despair, and then anger. He was angry at his father, for never loving him, for being such a cold and callous parent. At his brother, for leaving him to that cruel and unfeeling man. He even tried to be angry at his mother, for dying and leaving him alone, but even in his bitterest moments he found he could not summon direct hatred for her- only for the means of her demise. Instead he wrapped the memory of her love into a soft place in his heart, before he enclosed it with steel and locked it away forever. Never again would he expect that kind of love from anyone.

Never again.

“Well now,” the Inquisitor said as it withdrew from his mind, leaving him shaking and drained, his bloody face streaked by his tears. “You are a pathetic creature. Wouldn't you like to change all that? Join us, and you can have vengeance upon all. With us, you can have so much more...”

“Never!” he gasped, and the demon had shrieked in rage at his continued defiance. A clawed hand had struck him, a single talon ripped a slash across the left side of his face, and as hot blood sheeted over his jaw and down the side of his neck, he found it in him to say: “I will never join you!”

***

He didn't know how long he'd been there. He'd lost all track of time. Every moment of the brutal torture, the mental torment, tore him down. Bit by bit he began losing himself. They taught him what it meant to scream until his throat was bloody, what it felt like to go blind when the agony filled every cell of his being, what fainting felt like when he could no longer cope with the pain. They wore him down with promises of healing, with visions of grandeur and power, played upon his internalized anger and hate, promised him revenge upon all who had done him wrong, and it became easier and easier to consider saying... yes. Please, yes, I will, take me, I will do it!

He didn't. Somewhere, deep inside, a shred of himself held on, desperate and terrified. He watched as others who had been captured succumbed to death, and envied them for their release. Worse, he watched as a group of rescuers arrived, fighting and killing demons in a bloody swathe, and freeing those who yet still lived... but not him. No, they looked at him, recognized his face and said... “We're better off without that one.”

And it was true, he thought. He wasn't really worth saving, and he realized that now. He was an unpleasant person. He had grown into a bitter and angry young man, a sullen and disdainful creature who did not try to endear himself to anyone. He held the world and the people in it at bay, because feeling anything gentler caused him pain, and he wanted nothing of it. He had spent years hardening his heart, had warped that happy young boy of his past self beyond recognition, trying to emulate an uncaring parent in the forlorn hope that he would somehow gain his approval. He'd given up his dreams of being a builder and engineer, had gone instead to train as a mage as his brother had done, even though he hated it. It was what his father had demanded of him, because to be anything else was to be lesser. He spent years trying to prove he was as good as his brother- but even his greatest successes were not deemed good enough.

When he was pressed into service with the Horde, fighting the Burning Legion in a long forgotten land he did not know, he told himself he was not there to make friends. He was there to kill the enemy- so there was no one out there who felt he should be saved.

So once again he was abandoned, this time to a fate worse than death, and something inside him broke as he watched them leave. He would probably die here, in this reeking place. They would feed him to the soul engine, or feed upon his soul directly, or maybe just leave him there to starve, until nothing but his bones remained to mark his passing. He had nothing left to fight them.

Then rescue really did arrive, and it was not what he expected at all. A young human woman, a hunter accompanied by two enormous wolves, came to rescue those of her own faction who had been imprisoned as he had. She had passed him by, to check the inner chambers of the cave for survivors. It was possible she had thought him already dead, or too far gone to save, hanging limply from his chains as he was- or simply because he was a blood elf, and she was a human, and their factions did not get along, even during this temporary alliance against the Legion. But when he heard her steps approach again he had struggled to lift his head, had moaned to try and gain her attention, had dared to let just a tiny flame of hope flicker within him. She had stopped then, and turned back, had knelt before him and cradled his face in her hands, lifting his chin so she could get a look at him.

He would always remember her face. Soft and almost elf-like in its delicate structure, her eyes such a pale blue they were almost luminescent in the darkness, her coppery red hair plaited to keep it out of her face. She smelled of honeysuckle and wood smoke and well oiled leather, and he would never, ever forget her soft and gentle voice.

“You don't deserve this,” she had said.

You don't deserve this.

She saved him.

***

Ceros remembered little of his rescue, and knew even less about his rescuer. He recalled only brief, confusing flashes of the trip: a long, cold ride on horse back, a freezing and rainy night spent in a hastily pitched tent, while she tried to coax him into drinking something hot, cradling his head on her lap... He didn't know her name, had no idea who to thank for his second chance at life. All he had to remember of her was a heavy, fur lined cloak, which she had wrapped him in to keep him warm as they traveled. 

As he laid upon a bed in a ward in a Dalaran hospital, he pulled that cloak from where it lay folded upon a nearby chair and held it to his bruised and battered face, and inhaled deeply to remind himself of her, and her incredible kindness. He clutched its soft folds to his chest and drew a shaking breath, swearing that one day, he would find her and return it to her.

A quiet footfall nearby alerted him to someones presence. He opened his eyes, expecting a healer come to check on him, and saw instead a face that resembled his own, a man wearing the robes of the Kirin Tor.

His brother.

“Dracaris,” he said, the first word he'd spoken in... he wasn't sure how long. His throat felt raw and painful, and speaking hurt.

Dracaris's face was worried, his eyes shocked at the sight of him. “Oh, Ceros,” he said, clearly struggling to keep his voice even, and then it cracked slightly as he added “Oh, little brother. What have they done to you?”

Ceros stared back, trying to summon up the energy to feel... anything, about his brother. He'd last seen his older sibling when he had come home to gain his father's permission to marry the woman he loved, only to be met with a hostile rant about how unsuitable a match she was. Father wanted him to marry someone of import in an arranged marriage, and the fight that ensued had been spectacular. Dracaris finally stormed from the house, his face and ears flushed in his fury, and swore he'd never return- the last thing he saw of him was a letter, addressed only to Ceros, announcing that he had married his love and would be moving to Dalaran to continue his service with the mages of the Kirin Tor. Ceros had cast the letter into the fire, angry at once again being left behind, left alone. No other letters came for him after that one. 

When he sought out the old feelings of anger and resentment he once held for his sibling- something familiar that he could use to defend himself- he found they had abandoned him. In their place resided only an aching emptiness.

Dracaris's weight settled on the edge of his bed. 

“I was afraid I'd never see you again, brother,” he said softly, and cradled Ceros's cheek with his hand. “The healers said you'd been captured by demons- that you were barely alive when you'd arrived in their care. Someone knew you, and put your name up on the casualty listings. I was told I'd find you here. Oh, Ceros. I should have looked for you sooner.”

“You left me,” Ceros whispered. He didn't have the strength to muster up an accusatory tone, but clearly Dracaris felt his words like a slap to the face. “I was... alone...”

His brother gripped his shoulders then, emotion making his eyes shimmer. “Never again,” he said fiercely. “I have failed you before as a brother, but never again. I wish... I wish I had done better. I wish I had done things differently. I wish I could go back and change it all, so you didn't have to suffer the way you did. I thought... how you must hate me. It was why I didn't stay in touch, after I left- I was being a coward, hiding from you. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

Ceros felt his throat close during his brother's rush of words, felt his breaths constrict in his chest at their meaning. The armored shell he'd built to protect himself began to crack, and everything he'd tried not to feel for years of his life rose to the surface like a swelling tide, and there was no holding it back.

Ceros closed his eyes as they started to leak, and Dracaris's arms came around him, picking him up off the pillows. He felt his face pressed against his brothers shoulder, his sibling embracing him as their mother once did, so long ago.

“I will never leave you alone again, Ceros,” his brother whispered. “I'm here now. I'm here.”

He was too weak to wail, but he clutched at the hunter's cloak he held and at his brother's robes, and he wept.


End file.
